


Friend of ours

by rawthorne (noisette)



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: End Game, Hand Jobs, M/M, Platonic Female/Male Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:59:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noisette/pseuds/rawthorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They may not talk about it, but it did happen. The more Peeta tries not dwell on the details, the more his treacherous mind provides fodder for nightmares free of Capitol tampering. (Spoilers for the trilogy. Not epilogue compliant.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friend of ours

They don't talk about it, yet sometimes, when Peeta creeps close, when Gale is so lost in thought that he doesn't hear him approach until it's too late and he can't excuse himself without drawing attention, Peeta will see broad shoulders squared and stiff like the broad back of a beast preparing to leap at him through the bars of its cage. He'll sense discomfort and be the first to move aside. It feels like he's been doing that for ever, just making room for Gale to reclaim his place at Katniss's side. 

This is how he knows that he's not the only one who remembers. It's hardly scientific, but it's the best he's got. Shared memory is his only comfort.

He's not a threat to Gale, not now, not ever, and he takes pains to make the other boy see as much by including him in the daily, tedious running of the house. All that earns him is short rebuffs and silent, lonely afternoons as the moon slides across a pitch black sky. No, Gale doesn't want to eat. He has nothing to say about the new regime or the changes wrought upon Panem. Katniss's mother is well; so are his siblings. He gives no details and provides no humorous tales to pass the time. He'll dig up vegetables for the stew if he has to, even in the sweltering afternoon heat; he'll do anything to escape Peeta's futile attempts at conversation. (That's not said as much as it is implied.) 

Around the subject of Katniss, Gale's fingers often clench into fists whose possible, intended destination is Peeta's jaw. Gale doesn't like admitting that she didn't tell him how long she'd be gone or where she was going. Once, as her best and only friend, he had privileged access to that kind of information. That's no longer the case. He'll announce his ignorance like it doesn't tear him up inside, but all the while his silver gaze will be scanning the horizon for some trace of her return. Too often, Peeta's eyes will also be stealing furtive glances. At Gale, that is. 

_I'm sorry,_ he thinks, hunting for a way to phrase his regret that won't lead to Gale's capable hands tearing out his windpipe. _She runs from me, too. I'm sorry I made it worse._

They may not talk about it, but it did happen. The more Peeta tries not to dwell on the details, the more his treacherous mind provides fodder for nightmares free of Capitol tampering. Sometimes it's Gale doing the weeping in his dreams, others it's seeing the disgust in Katniss's eyes as she calls him abomination that rends his insides. Monster. _Murderer._ Peeta will turn around and she'll be right; the moonlit bed will be drenched in Gale's blood and he'll be standing there, armed with a cleaver and a powerful need to flee. 

Most often, though, it's not nightmares at all that populate his nights. The dreams will start sweet and stay like that for the longest time, until Gale presses him into the mattress and his eyes water and he cannot breathe --

\-- until Peeta comes to, thrashing and feverish, his useless, prosthetic leg tangled in the sheets. He hasn't woken Katniss with his commotion yet and that's all to the good. He wouldn't know what to say if she were to see him like this; his silver tongue would probably tie itself in knots. He'd spontaneously combust.

He'd die. _Don't be so dramatic,_ he thinks, guiltily dropping a trembling hand to his stiff length, as if tortuous pressure will make desire go away. It doesn't. The false memory of Gale's fists takes care of that.

* 

Katniss asks if he's getting sick before she goes on her morning constitutional. 

"No, I'm all right." Peeta won't meet her eyes. "Didn't sleep well, that's all." It's not a lie. He flinches when her hand lands on his shoulder and squeezes. There was a time not so long ago when he would've done anything for the slightest sign of affection from Katniss. He would've killed and maimed thousands. He would've laid down his life. 

He did. 

It turns out Katniss doesn't like other people doing her killing for her. She doesn't ask Gale along on her stroll, but when she comes back there are three squirrels hung from her belt instead of two, and she walks with a spring in her step. In the kitchen, with the windows open wide to let in the summer breeze, Peeta helps her skin the catch with diligent hands. It's easy to work without talking, just the two of them and the rhythmic peeling of flesh. Peeta almost thinks he could live like this until the ice encasing Katniss's heart begins to thaw, until she's ready for more than platonic friendship, but then the sound of footsteps in the foyer catches his ear and suddenly it doesn't seem so feasible anymore.

The absurdity of a boy who builds bomb standing in the kitchen door with an armful of yellow flowers is not lost on Peeta, though it's Katniss whose tongue breaches the silence. 

"Made a conquest?" she asks, smirking with half a mouth. Peeta knows she doesn't mean to be cruel, this is just the only way she knows how to laugh anymore: at the expense of others. 

Gale's brows furrow deep. "No." He sets the flowers down on the table, halfway between Katniss's lifeless rodent and Peeta's. "I thought, for tomorrow…"

Tomorrow is The Anniversary. In Katniss's presence, that's all Peeta and Haymitch ever dare to call it. More often than not, they don't call it anything at all, letting the date pass unacknowledged, celebrating in private if they need to remember the dead. Gale doesn't know this. Peeta could have said, but then Gale has made it clear he doesn't want to hear or see him. If only Peeta could evaporate into the walls of this lonely house, everything would be so much easier. 

There is little warning before Katniss slams the door on her way out as she tears out of the house in a sullen temper. She's not usually one for spectacle, but for Gale and the war and the ghost of her dead sister, she makes an exception. 

"She hasn't really… made peace." Peeta's explanation falters under a fierce silver glare. "Want to help me with these?"

He doesn't know why he bothers asking. Over the past two weeks, every time Gale could avoid being alone with him, he did. Ostentatiously so. Not only is Peeta's presence abhorrent to Gale, but his company is unwanted. _You're in my way,_ Gale's body language tells him. _Get lost before I trample you to death._ There was a time not so long ago when Peeta would've believed him capable, too.

Not anymore. These days he isn't sure what he believes, except -- Gale takes up a cleaver and Katniss's squirrel and cleanly, masterfully chops off its head with a single stroke. He too is good at killing things. 

*

Peeta has a room set aside for canvas and paint, the eggshell white mixing in streaks with the red and the black, both colors that he's long learned to associate with the Capitol. There's no need to fill the pages of his drawing books with horror anymore, but when the house is quiet and Katniss is gone traipsing through the forest, Peeta can't think of any other distraction. 

He'd sweep the kitchen again, but Gale might be downstairs, fuming. On the page, that sentiment translates to taut fingers squeezing at a scrawny neck. The palette is muted blues and foggy greys for this one, a coal sketch that no one is meant to see or appreciate. It brings Peeta comfort to have an outlet for his thoughts, for all that he cannot bring himself to put to paper the visions that rise before his unseeing eyes at night.

"You busy?" Stealth and skill are equal parts beautiful and scary, but Gale is nothing like Katniss when he shows up on the threshold to Peeta's room. He doesn't even flinch under the shine of so many vivid colors. It's like he purposefully avoids looking at anything but Peeta himself. That might be charity, but all Peeta can think is that this _boy_ has a lot of nerve to be coming up here, invading his space. He squeezes down around a charcoal pencil and imagines it's Gale's neck. (That's wrong, though: the hands he drew are not his own.)

His silence is apparently as good as an invitation for Gale to go on. "I need your help," he says, squaring his jaw. 

"Katniss?" As soon as he's said it, he knows he shouldn't have. Gale's bearing changes almost instantly. He's lost the incremental ease of the intruder, the leonine stalking through the yellow grass. Now there's ice in his gaze when he looks at Peeta. 

"Not Katniss. Are you helping me or not?"

Peeta sets his notebook aside. Downstairs in the kitchen, the flowers he picked out make up a pile of wilting leaves and short, crooked stems. "I was trying to tie a wreath," Gale explains, looking at once defensive and a little sheepish. "It keeps coming undone."

The sight is a rare one, but Peeta lives with a woman of mystery and strange, inexplicable mood swings. He knows better than to question the whims of Seam-born kids. 

"Fill up a pail," he instructs. "Then bring me the scissors from that drawer. It's easy work, you just need a careful hand." It's the same as setting up a snare, he says, in that patience rules the day. His grip is sure and steady as he shows Gale what to do. He won't think of it as betraying Katniss. He's just helping a friend, though Gale hardly qualifies. 

*

They hang the wreaths at noon. One on their door, one on Haymitch's. The yellow flowers are already wilting, but the crisp afternoon might preserve them for a little while longer. 

"Good job," Peeta says, braiding the last of the torn stems into a manacle no wider than his fist. He's acutely aware of the other boy's scent as they stand together on the porch, shoulders almost touching, their shirts reeking of sweat and musk and the one crude brand of soap found at the market. His fingers slip over the knot, but he gets it tied in the end, all the better to avoid looking Gale in the eye as he works. 

He should know better; he can't hide from Katniss on a good day, and this paragon of Seam audacity taught her everything she knows. "What's that?" Gale's head tilts to one shoulder. "Looks too small to be a wreath."

Peeta shrugs. "It's not." It isn't anything, just Peeta's hands repeating a motion again and again, needing the rhythmic diversion to take his mind off the dark thatch of hair visible through the open V of Gale's shirt or the quicksilver slant of his voice when he isn't forcing himself to answer inane questions. He feels like he's treading water whenever Gale notices his presence, which is mercifully quite a rare thing, but it turns out not being acknowledged is even worse. 

That must be why he reaches for a thick-boned hand to slide the braided bracelet around Gale's wrist. "There. You can have it." 

Gale makes to pull back, a stop-start motion that doesn't quite abort in time to conceal the show of doubt. It's such a small thing but it means the world, even if Gale follows it up with a hasty, snorting "thanks" and hunched shoulders as he retreats back into the house. Peeta buries his nails into his palms just to remember this moment. 

_Real. It's real._

By the time Katniss gets back, the wreaths are almost forgotten. A plucked yellow blossom in her tan fingers brings back the thought. 

"Are you upset?" Peeta has seen her upset before. Sometimes he thinks he's made up all of their happier moments from propos and lies whispered by his Capitol torturers. "If you're upset, just please… don't tell him," he adds, aware that he's begging and not entirely sure why he thought to bother. Gale can do his own guilt tripping; he's good at that, what with his Capitol spook-school training and a uniform to go with it. He'll be gone soon, anyway. This is only a temporary arrangement. 

Katniss frowns. "Why not?" She'll tell who she wants and they both know it; she's the Mockingjay. On a day when the war is alive and well and glaringly, obviously consuming the collective consciousness, she's also and far more importantly Peeta's friend. He can't lie to her any more than he can tell her the truth. But Katniss is smart. She's never been particularly sharp about matters of the heart -- except when they don't concern her; she figures Peeta's secret in a single breath, like she's never been managed before. 

The moment of discovery is written in her eyes. If she's angry or sad or disappointed, if she wants to call him abomination, then he doesn't get a chance to find out. Gale strolls in, as casual as if he were walking on hot coals. He sees her standing with the blossom in hand. 

"Katniss…"

"What's for lunch?" As epiphanies go, this one begins and ends with Katniss calling the shots.

*

It's easy to love the Mockingjay. Laborious, sure, and occasionally soul-crushing, but also safe. Predictable. Peeta has spent months playing house without hope of change. That's not to say there has been no evolution; she talks to him now. She says good morning and good night and Peeta can even get away with telling her the gossip from the village. On a good day, she'll even smile at his jokes, a thin quivering of the lips that Peeta knows is for his eyes only. He's gotten so used to living for those rare, joyous moments that he's wholly unprepared for Gale when he descends on the District some eighteen months almost to the day since they last saw each other in the Capitol.

Peeta's house is cold and lonely and he spends most of his time looking out the window while Gale is visiting. He keeps expecting to catch a glimpse of the former hunting partners locked in a passionate embrace somewhere beyond the bedroom window. No such luck. The images take seed in his imagination alone and they're not so deeply rooted that Peeta ever quite mistakes them for reality.

After Gale leaves, Katniss won't speak of his visit. She'll hunt on her own, sometimes disappearing until the small hours without a word of explanation. She goes to see Haymitch first, before she ever knocks on Peeta's door.

It's Katniss who makes the first step. That's worth remembering. It doesn't change anything, though, as far as her feelings for him. 

"Pretty girl, that Val." Haymitch gets into the habit of bringing a bottle on the last day of the working week. They convene in Peeta's kitchen, partly because it's the warmest, mostly because it neither smells of fresh blood nor spilled liquor. 

Peeta doesn't recognize the name. "Who?"

"Butcher's daughter." Hands describe an hourglass figure with a waspish waist and generous bosoms. It's worth blushing at, but Peeta catches Haymitch's eye dart a glance in Katniss's direction and he understands why the old man is being so crass.

He takes him aside, later, as their modest gathering disperses and Katniss vanishes out of earshot. "I'm grateful for everything you've done for Katniss. And for me. Both in the Games and afterwards, but--"

"--you'd rather I stopped meddling in things that are none of my goddamn business, huh?" Rye liquor has put a glimmer in Haymitch's eye, dispelling the usual cobwebs. "Pains me to say it, but you're probably right. What's a geezer like me know about romance? Promise me you'll look up that Val girl, though. I'm telling you, you won't regret it." 

Peeta promises he'll follow his mentor's well-oiled advice. This isn't the first time he's lied about that.

They seek solitude by default, the three of them, and it's not until Peeta's roof collapses in late winter that they give much thought to pulling together. Katniss comes up with the idea, seemingly out of nowhere, and Peeta isn't so attached to playing hard to get that he'll refuse. Under the guise of getting through winter without freezing, he takes up residence in one of the unused bedrooms in her house. 

He looks his door at night in case the nightmares get bad, a tactic which proves ridiculously ill-advised after the first time he rouses Katniss with his screams and she breaks down the door. 

The door handle is still broken by the time spring rolls around. So, too, is the roof on his putative residence across the green-speckled yard. This is the shape of their unexceptional lives when Gale returns from the Capitol a year on, his second visit with no better warning than the last. He isn't pleased, but he only seems surprised to discover that Katniss and Peeta still sleep in separate beds. 

"You can't be that old-fashioned," he accuses the first night, after Peeta has brought fresh bread from the village and a leg of lamb discounted for him by comely, eager-to-please Val.

Katniss glares, her grip around the carving knife turning white-knuckled. 

"We can't all be modern Capitol hotshots like you. But don't worry, Katniss keeps a very comfortable couch with your name on it." Peeta smiles beatifically. "I've even broken it in for you."

Gale chokes on his supper and it's by far the most satisfying outcome Peeta could've hoped for.

It gets easier after that. There's never any lessening of the tension between Katniss and Gale, but grudging obligation means everyone toes the line of civility and Peeta is never bothered to make conversation for very long. He stays in his room a lot. Painting, mostly, as long as the light is decent, or scrawling memories down to verify with Katniss when she gets back from her wild treks. He watches Gale come and go from Haymitch's house more than once. When he's not doing that, he's often hacking wood in the back yard; he's good with the wood axe. 

It's no trial at all to complain about the dull thwack of the chopper echoing around in the lugubrious silence of the house. The noise is distracting and unpleasant, breaking the stream of Peeta's elusive thoughts on more than one occasion. And yet when he looks out the window, it's never to shout at Gale to take his frustrations out on some other inanimate object, preferably in silence and far from their yard. 

Many minutes are wasted on the curve of Gale's suntanned shoulders or the hunch of his spine as he swings the red-tipped axe. There's only guilt to warn Peeta against this ghoulish habit, but by then it's already too late. On more than one occasion, he finds it necessary to burry a fist in his mouth when he spends himself on the vivid sight, but Gale never looks up. He can't know.

*

After Katniss finds out, the secret can only stay hidden for so long. Peeta contemplates seeking refuge with Haymitch, as if an old drunkard trying desperately to moderate his fondness for liquor would be much help against the demons that plague Peeta's nights. They're responsible for keeping him wide awake into the small hours: they and the hollow need in the pit of his stomach, unquenched despite Peeta's attempts. 

It's only in the morning, when Katniss once more greets him with impassive words and a hearty yawn that he remembers: she doesn't care for him like that. She never has. 

She doesn't treat Gale any differently, either, although she's less keen on escaping their company. Peeta finds her watching Gale with eyes as blue as the eastern sky. He tries to attribute all kinds of castigating brands to the softness in her gaze, but nothing fits. She's observing, like a child might look at a wild thing and try to guess what manner of god put it on this earth, and why. Every assessment ends with a shrug. She doesn’t know; she doesn't care.

"I'll be back before sundown," she tells him after breakfast, slinging her bow over her shoulder as he scrubs the dishes. "I can… stay longer, if you want me to." 

Peeta searches her eyes for false politeness. Finds none. This is Katniss, after all, the girl who cannot lie and would have burned for her earnestness. 

Her so-called sweetheart, on the other hand, can barely tell truth from fiction on a good day. "Listen, I think you may have the wrong idea about -- about me." Peeta's soap-slicked hands take hold of the broad-lipped rim of the sink. The enamel is chipped and perfect for bitten nails looking for purchase, but it's not much of an anchor for fleeting honesty. "There's nothing going on. Right now. I'll swear to it."

"But you wish otherwise."

Peeta doesn't deny it. He can't. Thick, hard-earned sincerity sticks his tongue to the cavernous black roof of his mouth. Every time his eyes meet Gale's, he feels something gnawing in his belly, it's true, desire so venomous it's like a parasite or a disease. It's the worst kind of pain, because it usually prefaces a frown on the other boy's Seam-coarsened face. 

With a creaking of the floorboards, Katniss slides in close, closer than she's been for the two years and a half they've spent in Twelve, and kisses his cheek. It takes Peeta a full minute to realize that this might be what a friend's blessing feels like if said friend were to be asked her opinion. Unfortunately by then Katniss has already escaped the house and he's left with nothing but thin air and a low, warm ache in his chest. 

If lust is a beast nibbling on his nerves, then love is the soothing balm that eases the wound.

*

The first time he came, Gale brought with him the shadow of the war. It sprung like a mutt in his nightmares, fully formed and heaving putrid breaths against Peeta's nape as he tried to sleep. Its fangs reached into his flesh, rending skin that had only just begun to scar and spilling blood all over the Mockingjay's pale sheets. 

Somehow, perhaps through willpower alone, Peeta managed to slip out of the house without rousing its only rightful resident. He crept through the bristling blades of grass and around the hedgerow until his own door opened at a shaking twist of the latch. He knew he'd find no comfort in these walls, in this shoddy roof, only the ghost of the Capitol's torment, but better to wail and scratch at the thin plaster here than where he could be seen.

It must have been a pathetic sight to wake to for anyone, but all the more so when it was Gale suddenly standing there, in the doorway, silhouetted in an oblong of moonlight that spilled in through the uneven holes in the roof. 

No questions from him, only the soft whisper of those well accustomed to shell-shock. "It's over," he told Peeta. "It's all over. You survived. Katniss survived, you didn't hurt anyone…"

When Peeta's hands reached out to grab his wrists, Gale didn't resist. He proved real and warm and he enveloped Peeta in his arms as tight as Peeta asked of him. He very likely thought this a crass display of weakness, one more fault to lay at Peeta's door and mock when the sun rose. It incensed Peeta to imagine it, even as he stifled sobs against the thick graze of stubble. Gale smelled of wild, open spaces, and frost, and bombs, but he tasted like a boy who never quite stopped coveting a clandestine spoonful of jam. 

"Wait," he murmured against Peeta's lips, his whole body stiffening like electric current had zapped him into stillness. 

A better man would have stopped, but that man wasn't Peeta. This heat, this force, this senseless pull that the moon had unleashed on his troubled mind all but barred Peeta from letting go. It had been better than a year since he'd come this close to another human being, let alone had someone to kiss and hold and stroke his cheek. So he did it. He kissed Gale with desperation bordering on pitiful, cradling the other boy's head to him like that might prevent him wrenching free. 

It had never been a fair fight between them: Gale was all sinew and lean, well-carved muscle, while any strength Peeta had developed during the war had slipped back into layers of natural padding that made him feel at once gluttonous and relieved. He'd never wanted to look in the mirror and see a soldier; that was the Capitol's doing. Dimly, he remembers wondering if Gale was put off: a remarkably short-lived preoccupation as the memory of a hand tangling in his blonde hair burns through him. How Gale surged into the kiss, taking ownership without much preamble, how he bit at his lips with bruising force…

Whenever Peeta imagined Katniss and Gale together, it was always like this; vicious and violent, with Gale crushing his lips against her own and biting at her neck like wolves in the forest. He imagined Katniss giving as good as she got; he tried to do as much on his own behalf, but Gale pressed him back against the wall, trapping his legs under him so he couldn't even arch his hips forward in some lewd impersonation of seduction, much less answer the sharp, nipping bites along the sensitive skin of his collarbones. He parted his knees obediently when he felt gentle, nudging pressure and suddenly Gale was there, putting a denim-clad thigh between his legs and canting his hips forward, greedy for the guilty moans that spilled from Peeta's throat. 

\-- and Peeta comes like that, now as he did then, in a rush of heat and shame, his eyes watering and his toes curling into the sheets. He can no more warn this echo of Gale than he can apologize for what he did to shame them both. 

By the time he'd gathered his wits enough to release Gale's wrinkled shirt, the other boy wouldn't look at him. It's no wonder, but it is a heavy burden to carry into every stolen moment of joy.

*

They don't talk about the way Gale's fingers carded through his hair while Peeta came down from his high. Or the soft, gentle words he saved for him before that, as pleasure made Peeta frantic and set fresh tears brimming in his eyes. 

They definitely don't talk about struggling to their knees, afterwards, and picking their way across the green, Gale's hand hovering at his back, the distance between them just growing and growing. It was never a concerted decision to keep Katniss in the dark. They just pretended to wake up the next morning as if they hadn't crossed a line that had been drawn in the sand for so long it might as well have been an ancient relic. 

Like all the secrets that keep piling up between them as if stones at a grave site, it just happened. 

*

Gale comes with him to the market to trade old winter clothes for someone willing to help patch up his rooftop. His help is welcome but unnecessary; the furs and knitted woollens gifted to him and Katniss by their Capitol sponsors seem gaudy in the leather knapsack he tightens around the heap. Three loads, one for each battle fought, with dozens of mittens and cloaks in vivid colors. 

"We never wore any of it," Peeta explains to the merchant. The district is changing quickly, old ruins are being rebuilt month on month. He doesn't know the sellers in the old bakery anymore and their wares are a mystery to him. People travel from far away for a chance to glimpse the Mockingjay, often they end up making their home in the District despite the disenchantment. The more come, the more trade helps erase what was once, not so long ago, a warzone.

Gale and Peeta fill up on milk and mead afterwards, and Peeta can't help notice Val in the doorway of her father's shop. She's getting married, she says, brandishing the news like an amulet. It's a joyous thing. Peeta congratulates the family and asks about the groom.

He notices Gale's silence most strongly on the way home. There's being stoic and then there's this awkwardness that hangs between them. Peeta himself is hardly blameless, but pulling on the cart is hard work with his bum leg; he can barely get enough air in his lungs to breathe, let alone speak, and as they crest the hill nearest to the house, he has to pause and rest awhile. He opens his mouth to apologize for the thing that happened almost a year ago. The thing they do not speak of.

The _mistake_.

He opens his mouth and -- it's Gale who speaks: "She's a fool, if you ask me." Peeta hasn't asked, but that seems beside the point. 

It takes him a moment to realize Gale is talking about wasp-waisted Val and the ribbons in her fiery hair announcing her forthcoming nuptials. Such harshness is perhaps to be expected from Gale. He cannot echo it. "We can't all go through life alone."

"Katniss seems to manage it."

"And she's a picture of contentment?" Peeta stops to shift a pebble from his shoe. "Give it time. Maybe next time you visit, you'll be engaged to some pretty, uniformed girl who makes you want to get up in the morning. You're only human, Gale."

When he looks up, he finds the other boy limned in sunlight, a considering cant to his chin. He expects scathing remarks about pedestrian sentimentality -- perhaps even a fist-punch to shut Peeta's mouth once and for all. He sees the hand coming, braces for impact.

"Come on," Gale says, grabbing his wrist to hepl him from the ground. "I'm baking in this heat." Sweat rings the thin material of his shirt under the arms, yet his grip is dry and far from punishing. 

Peeta swallows as he watches the muscles in a tan arm cord and release. They share the pulling of the cart the rest of the way home, supposedly to ease the burden. It's as much for necessity as it is for Peeta's viewing pleasure. At least if he's to feel ashamed, he ought to have a reason.

*

Before dinner, while Peeta is chopping cold cuts into manageable sizes and dicing cucumber, Gale makes use of the water pump in the backyard to cool off. Kitchen windows look out onto the scene and Peeta has to train his gaze away from the spectacle. It's harder to do when Gale catches him at it and suggests he join in. There's only so many times Peeta can refuse before it begins to seem suspicious. 

He sheds only his shirt, uneasy with the thought of baring his prosthetic leg to judging eyes, and yet the cold stream of water that Gale directs his way quickly reveals this for a poor decision.. 

"Traitor!" Peeta accuses, sputtering. Gale does it again, grinning, and then they're off like that, laughing and soaked through as they fight to turn the spout this way or that. Peeta knows he's outgunned from the beginning, but he makes a valiant stand all the same, refusing to give in until Gale has an arm around his waist, body slick and hot and strong enough that he topples them both to the grass without much effort. 

Gale's shoulder cushions their fall. His hands scrabble for purchase at Peeta's wrists, a task made difficult by Peeta's squirming limbs. Laughter peters out, giving center stage to staggered breaths and writhing bodies. A leg hooks around Peeta's prosthetic and they both freeze in their pretend-struggle, syncopated inhales shared in close proximity.

Peeta's belly has never felt more hollow, except perhaps when he was in that cave, with Katniss perched above him. What is it about being pinned down, either by circumstance or broad palms, that excites him so? 

The quick, guilty glance Gale shoots his parted lips gives the answer. 

"Let me up," Peeta murmurs. "Gale--"

And Gale does, hesitating just long enough to fuel Peeta's restless thoughts with doubt for years to come. If he notices a tell-tell tightness in Peeta's dripping, he must be too embarrassed to say anything. Nor does he try to stop Peeta from hobbling into the house and up the stairs to his room, where he hides his head in the crook of an arm and sends the other questing guiltily between his thighs.

Dinner is a little late that evening. Katniss only comes back as they're washing the dishes in abject silence. 

*

If it was hard to bear Gale's reserve before, Peeta can hardly stand it after making a fool of himself in the yard. He tries to paint to take his mind off this gnawing frustration, only to discover that the thump-thump of the red-tipped axe drives his hand into earthy swirls of sinew and muscle, of silver eyes set in a shadowed face. He rips the paintings before the watercolors can dry. He tries cleaning, scrubbing pots that weren't all that grimy to begin with until his fingers burn with the effort. Gale still doesn't mock him, still doesn't come to him.

Desperate for purpose, Peeta makes a habit of walking in the village every morning and every night, his leg aching from the hip all the way down to the plastic heel. 

He goes into the butcher's shop just to hear Val prattle on about her wedding, until that distraction, too, loses its appeal. 

Katniss finds him resting on the side of the road one night, about four days into the waiting game. She sits beside him on a boulder that's far from comfortable, saying nothing. Peeta cracks first. He always does. 

"I kissed him." He takes a deep breath. "Last year. I kissed him." Courage is something that lessens with age, at least in Peeta's experience, but he has enough left to add: "I'm not sorry."

Hand patting his thigh, Katniss slides back onto her feet. "He's leaving tomorrow, you know."

Peeta nods. Knowing changes nothing; he's felt empty, his chest carved out like a pumpkin, ever since Gale came back to the district. It'll be better once he's gone. Everything will go back to the way it was.

"You're a fool." 

He doesn't deny that, either.

* 

The truth is that Peeta doesn't want things to go back to the way they were. He sits on the edge of the bed long after the house has gone dark and everyone is asleep. Across the yard, the crumbling relic of his own home still awaits repair. That will keep him busy all through summer. Then there's Val's wedding and helping with the digging of a new well and the fall festival after that. And Katniss will keep going on her hunts and Haymitch will still struggle with sobriety. Life will go on, another year passing him by, this one to no better purpose than the last.

He starts at the sound of knuckles rapping gently on his door. He didn't hear footsteps, but Katniss can sneak up on a buck and shoot it between the eyes without the beast sensing its impending doom; why should Peeta be any different?

"Gale--" The slant of broad, muscular shoulders is unmistakeable, even when shrouded in shadow. "What's wrong?" 

The other boy shakes his head as if to say _be quiet_. He takes a step and Peeta foolishly mirrors him, stepping back. His prosthetic leg drags across the floor. He's not afraid, but he'd be a fool to think he can take Gale unarmed. If there's to be a fight, then he's already lost. (He hopes that's not why Gale is here, though he has trouble attributing a different motive.) 

His bedroom feels suddenly far too small for the two of them and it only gets smaller still when Gale eases the door shut behind him. The wait is harder to bear than any fist-punch.

When he finally speaks, Gale's words seem slow and staggered. "I thought you wanted that girl from the village -- I don't remember her name, but the one who makes eyes at you and calls you 'sweetheart'. And then I thought you were still sweet on Katniss. And I hated you for it." He folds a hand around Peeta's shoulder, the palm so heavy, so warm that there's no mistaking this for a dream. "I kept waiting for one of you to say something… to tell me to leave. But you didn't. I started thinking that maybe that wasn't it at all."

The bedframe smacks into Peeta's calves. He can't go back any further, can't retreat in the face of Gale's gentle, nudging reproaches. A hand slides around to cup the back of his neck and Peeta shudders, desperate and afraid of contact all at once. 

"What do you want?" Gale grinds out, harsh, bittern words like gravel crunching underfoot. "Please tell me… please."

It's the note of supplication that breaks his resolve. Peeta has never been all that good at keeping his fingers out of the lion's maw. He surges into Gale's arms, gripping and flesh shirtfront in a white-knuckled grip as if that will somehow serve for an answer. And Gale -- Gale lets him. Long fingers steady him at hip and shoulder, lips pliant under the rough, bruising force of Peeta's kiss. There's never an attempt to wrest back the upper hand, for all that he towers over Peeta and could easily manhandle him into submission. This, too, is painfully familiar. 

Peeta licks his way past chapped lips and sharp teeth, tasting the spices of their hastily cooked supper and the thin, watery liquor uncorked for sake of the send-off. Some troublesome muscle clenches in his chest as they break for breath. Gale is leaving on the morning train. 

It's like they both come to the same conclusion at the exact same time. Peeta leads and Gale follows, lowering them to the mattress with great care. Scattered drawings crinkle under their bodies, most of them trapped under Peeta's hips. They don't stop to retrieve them. Gale pins a hand to the headboard, using it for leverage as he arcs his spine into a bow to lick at Peeta's neck and rub against his thighs in search of much-needed friction. 

Neither speaks, but that doesn't make them quiet. Soft, desperate moans echo between and around the slick sound of sloppy kisses. Peeta has only ever had Katniss to practice on and that was before a slew of cameras and a live audience. _Kiss or die_ doesn't leave much room for exploration. It's nothing like that at all with Gale. Truthfully, he doesn't know who taught Gale to kiss like this -- he imagines a hasty handjob in the darkness of the mines or a comely, generous girl in Thirteen -- but he's instantly grateful. There's no attempt to possess; somehow Gale seems to know just where to rest his weight to pin down flailing arms and squirming legs without restraining. Peeta has only to flex a wrist and he'll let go, quick and apologetic. 

That's the art of loving a wild thing, Peeta supposes. And what is he, with his blood-spattered hands and his battle scars, if not one of their kind?

"Put your hands on me," he demands, carding fingers through Gale's hair. "I want -- I need you to put your hands on me."

There's only a brief delay before Gale complies, and it's spent on the frantic tugging at the drawstrings that hold up Peeta's pants. They share the frustration of that interval, but the moan that follows is Gale's. He doesn't hesitate to wrap a fist around Peeta's hardening length, gaze flickering up to meet Peeta's. "Good?" He didn't ask that first night, didn't so much as pause in the steady stream of reassurance he offered in hopes that it might calm Peeta's hysterical quaking. That doesn't mean he was unaffected. 

Peeta gives him a wordless nod, then chases it with a long, drawn-out exhale. Their kiss is loaded with promises as of yet unspoken; he can feel them, brimming just beneath the surface. Truth will out. 

"You too," he begs, scratching at Gale's hip. He's the boy with all the clever words, but he can't make himself ask for Gale's cock even as his mouth waters and his head dips back into the pillows. 

It's fortunate that he has a lover -- is that what this is? -- for whom silence is a language onto itself. Gale deciphers his fragmented meaning all too easily, pausing the undulating, helpless roll of his hips to unbutton himself. Peeta feels his length against his belly before he can steal a glance down at his slick, flushed cock. He's seen men naked before; only a handful ever had this effect on him. "Beautiful," he murmurs. "You're beautiful." 

Gale laughs, a deep, earthy rumble in his chest, and takes his mouth in another wet kiss. He doesn't move Peeta's hand on his length, or make him wait too long before resuming the slow, rhythmic pace of his own fingers. It takes Peeta a moment to gather up the nerve to reciprocate and then they're off, gasping and pleading for each other, laughing brokenly when a particularly skilful sleight of hand threatens to topple them over the edge. They are neither of them practiced in the art of bedroom frolics, but that's okay, too, because inexperience makes for eager discovery. Gale doesn't hide his pleasure as he thrusts and trembles, resting his forehead against Peeta's and letting the moment transport them both. His face is unguarded, eyes bright and silver-blue, telling Peeta that he is wanted, that he's been desired all along. 

When he comes, Peeta cradles him as best he can. He doesn't mind the sticky spatter on his chest and belly, it will wash away; it's worth it for the way Gale looks at him after, how he holds Peeta in the circle of his arms, both protective and eager for contact. It makes Peeta wonder what he might do where he to put his mouth on Gale's cock and swallow his release. _Would you stay?_

The moment passes. Peeta makes to dab a corner of the sheet over the mess they've made. He thinks about stroking off while Gale lies beside him, but in the end does nothing to alleviate the need pooling in his belly. It'll go away. He doesn't even mind all that much. 

"What are you doing?" Gale huffs between gasping breaths as he watches Peeta set his clothes back in order.

Peeta shrugs. "I thought we were, you know, finished."

"Not by a long shot." A broad hand palms his cock through thin, damp cloth. They must get up to some interesting pastimes in the Capitol, for when Gale presses close to whisper in his ear, the other boy's voice carries with it a note of promise. "I would take you in my mouth," he murmurs, "or watch you squirm with my fingers inside you. And later, when you've recovered, I'd put your cock inside me and ride you until you're breathless with need for me." He's grinning as he pulls back. "Still think we're done?"

Orgasm has made him bold; his smiles come easy now. Peeta hooks an arm around broad shoulders, slotting their mouths together in a grateful kiss. They don't make it as far as promised, but it's a start.

*

Peeta wakes alone, the bed empty yet warm where a body rumpled the sheets and wrinkled the pages of his useless portfolio not so long ago. Fingers stretch over the indent of another head on his pillow. 

Somewhere beyond the village, a train pulls away from the station, bound for the distant Capitol. Its whistling engines go unheard. Peeta closes his eyes to the sound of footsteps on the creaking floorboards just outside the bedroom door. It could be Katniss. It could be Gale. As long as he doesn't look, both of these things are real.


End file.
